Apple Dodges Enough Taxes to Cover Much of the Sequester

The scheme that Apple cooked up this week to finance a $55 billion stock buyback for its shareholders was orchestrated to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes, Bloomberg reported Friday.
That $9.2 billion tax bill that Apple dodged would have been enough to make unnecessary all of the major budget cuts we’ve been writing about this week as part of our “Repeal the Sequester” campaign. With $9.2 billion, the federal government could have (based on lists compiled by The Washington Post’s Wonkblog and Think Progress):

Paid for rescinding the furloughs of air traffic controllers without raiding $250 million from an airport improvement fund.

Restored Head Start funding to avoid having to kick an estimated 70,000 people out of the program this year.

Kept Meals on Wheels funding for seniors intact.

Restored National Institutes of Health funding, so that research on cancer treatments and other diseases could continue uninterrupted.

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